The Belly of Paris (36 page)

Lisa forgot all about her brother-in-law, her fears, the reason she was there. She was lost in the fascination of one woman staring at another without inhibition and with no concern for being caught. She had never had an opportunity to study her rival from this close up. She examined her hair, nose, and mouth; she held the photograph at a distance, then brought it closer. Then with pursed lips she read on the back, written in large, distasteful letters, “From Louise, to her friend Florent.” She was shocked. It was as good as a confession, and she was tempted to keep the photograph as a weapon against her enemy. But she put it back in the envelope, slowly, thinking that keeping it would be wrong, and besides, she could always come back and get it later.

Then it was back to sifting through the papers, laying them one on top of the other. It occurred to her to look in the back where he had shoved Augustine's needles and thread. And there between the prayer book and
The Guide to Dreams
she found what she was looking for: incriminating notes hidden under a layer of gray paper. The idea of an uprising, a movement to overthrow the empire, an
armed insurrection, had been proposed one evening at Monsieur Lebigre's and had ripened in Florent's impassioned soul. He had soon come to think of it as a duty, a mission. At last he had found the reason for his escape from Guiana and his return to Paris. Thinking it his calling to avenge his thinness against this city that had grown fat while those who defended justice starved in exile, he was a self-appointed avenger, and he dreamed of rising up, right in Les Halles, and crushing this regime of drunks and gluttons. Into his sensitive nature, this idea had easily driven its nail. Everything grew out of all proportion. The strangest of stories were based on nothing. He imagined that immediately upon his arrival, Les Halles had grabbed him to sap him of his strength and poison him with its rankness.

It was Lisa who wanted to hypnotize him, and he would avoid her for days at a time, as though she were an acid that would, if he was exposed, eat away his will. These spasms of irrational panic, the outbursts of a man in revolt, always resulted in a surge of tenderness, the need to love, which he would hide like an embarrassed child.

Especially at night Florent's brain was consumed with such noxious fumes. Depressed by his day's work, his nerves tense, unable to sleep out of fear, he would stay late at Monsieur Lebigre's or the Méhudins', and when he got home, he still couldn't sleep, so he wrote, preparing the illustrious revolution. Slowly he drew up a plan. He divided Paris into twenty sectors, one per arrondissement,
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each with its own leader, a sort of general who would command twenty lieutenants in charge of twenty companies of followers. Every week these leaders would hold a staff meeting, always in a different sector, and, to ensure even greater secrecy, the followers would know only the lieutenant who commanded them, who in turn would deal only with the head of his sector. It would also be advisable that the companies be led to believe that they were discussing a hypothetical mission, which would have the effect of throwing off the police.

As for actually mobilizing these forces, that would be simple enough. Once the ranks had been instructed completely, you
would only have to take advantage of the first public outcry. Since they would probably have nothing more than a handful of hunting guns, they would first have to overrun military posts and disarm fire stations, the guard, and regular soldiers, with as little combat as possible by inviting them to join the cause of the people. Then they would march straight to the Corps Législatif and from there to the Hôtel de Ville.

Every night Florent returned to this plan, as though it were the script for a play that somehow relieved his frazzled nerves. It was so far only scribbling and doodles on scraps of paper, clearly showing the floundering of the author, at once scientific and childish. After Lisa read through the notes, only half understanding them, she sat there shaking, not daring to touch the papers, as though they might explode in her hands like a loaded weapon.

One final note shocked her more than all the rest. It was a half sheet of paper on which he had drawn the different insignias to distinguish the leaders from the lieutenants, and alongside she found the banners for various companies. Captions written in pencil specified the colors for each of the twenty sectors. The insignia of the leaders were red sashes, the lieutenants were to wear armbands, also red. This made Lisa able to visualize the riot. She could see the men, decked out in red, charging past her charcuterie, firing bullets into the mirrors and the marble, stealing sausages and andouilles from her window. These treacherous plots of her brother-in-law were an attack on her, an assault on her happiness.

She closed the drawer and looked around the room, telling herself that she was the one who had given this man a home, that he slept on her sheets and used her furniture. She was particularly irritated by the thought that he had concealed his infernal, abominable scheme in this little white wood table, an innocent, tattered table that she had used at Uncle Gradelle's house before her marriage.

She stood there, trying to decide what to do. First of all, it would be useless to discuss this with Quenu. It occurred to her to confront Florent, but she was afraid that he would just commit the crime further away, where he could still endanger them, just to be vindictive.
She calmed down and decided that the best course of action would be to keep an eye on him, and at the first sign of trouble she would return to these papers. In any event, she already had enough evidence to send him back to prison.

Back at the shop, she found Augustine in a state. Little Pauline had been missing for at least a half hour. When Lisa questioned her, she could only say, “I don't know, Madame. She was here just a minute ago on the sidewalk, playing with a little boy. I was watching them. Then I sliced some ham for a gentleman, and they were gone.”

“I'll bet it was Muche!” shouted Lisa. “That horrible child!”

And it was, in fact, Muche. Pauline, who was excited because she had just gotten a new dress with blue stripes, had wanted to show it off. She had stood very rigid in front of the shop, behaving perfectly, her face pulled into the earnest expression of a six-year-old lady who does not want to get dirty. Her short, starched dress spread out like a ballerina's skirts, revealing her smooth white stockings and shiny little blue boots. The dress had a low-cut apron with embroidered edging around the shoulders, out of which came her chubby, sweet, bare pink arms. She wore turquoise studs in her ears, a small gold cross around her neck, and a blue velvet ribbon in her well-coiffed hair, and she combined the plump, fleshy good looks of her mother with the fashionable style of a new doll.

Muche had spotted her from the market. He was releasing small dead fish into the stream, which the water washed away. He followed them along the pavement, insisting that they were swimming. But the sight of Pauline, so clean and pretty, made him cross the street, hatless, with a frayed shirt, his pants drooping down, and looking entirely like a seven-year-old street waif. His mother had forbidden him ever to play with “that fat beast stuffed by her parents until she practically explodes.” He circled for an instant, then came nearer, wanting to touch the pretty blue-striped dress. Pauline, flattered at first, put on a prudish face and stepped backward, saying in an angry tone, “Leave me alone … Mama told me not to.”

This made Muche laugh. He was very enterprising and selfconfident.
“What a dummy you are!” he said. “Who cares what your mama said? Let's play at pushing each other. Do you want to?”

He was considering a villainous plot to get Pauline dirty. But when she saw him about to shove her in the back, she stepped backward as though she were going to go back into the shop. Then he softened and hitched up his pants like a man of the world.

“Don't be silly it's just for a laugh. You know, you look very nice like that. Is that little cross your mama's?”

She said it was her own.

He quietly led her to the corner of rue Pirouette. He touched her skirt and was surprised at how oddly stiff it felt, and that greatly amused the little boy. All the time she had been posing outside, she had been upset that no one was paying any attention. But despite the flattery of Muche's attentions, she didn't want to leave the sidewalk.

“Dumb fatso!” shouted Muche, reverting to his crude ways. “I'm going to sit you in a basket of poop, Madame Big Butt.”

She started to panic. He had grabbed her by the hand, but seeing his mistake he spoke sweetly again as he fished around in his pocket for something. “I have a sou,” he said.

Pauline was calmed by the sight of the sou, which he held in front of her with his fingertips, so hypnotically that she followed the coin into the street without noticing. Clearly, good fortune was coming little Muche's way.

“What would you like?” he asked.

She did not answer immediately because she didn't know. She liked so many things. He suggested a whole lineup of scrumptious treats—licorice, molasses, gumdrops, powdered sugar. The little girl had to think carefully a minute about powdered sugar, the way you stuck your fingers in it and licked. It was very nice. But she remained quite stern until she decided, “No, I like cornets.”

So he took her by the arm and led her away. She did not resist. They crossed rue Rambuteau and followed the wide sidewalk of Les Halles until they reached a little grocery store on rue de la Cossonnerie that was renowned for its cornets. Cornets are thin paper cones into which grocers pour the debris from their window
display; broken dragées, marrons glacés that have fallen to pieces
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—the dubious scraps from the candy jars.

Muche did this well. He let Pauline choose her own cornet, one with blue paper, and he did not grab it from her when paying with his sou. Outside she emptied the assortment of crumbs into her two apron pockets, which were so small that they were filled quickly. She crunched slowly, crumb by crumb, elated, as she wet her finger to pick up the fine powder, which made the crumbs melt. Two brown stains appeared on her apron pockets. Muche laughed wickedly. He held the girl by the waist, rumpling her dress as he swung her around the corner of rue Pierre-Lescot over to square des Innocents. “Now you'll play huh?” he said. “You like what's in your pockets. See, I wasn't going to harm you, you big silly.”

And he stuck his fingers in her pockets too. They moved into the square, which was probably exactly the place where little Muche had wanted to lure his conquest all along. He showed her around the square as though it were his own private property, and actually it was a favorite afternoon haunt. Pauline had never wandered so far away and probably would have been in tears were it not for the sugar in her pockets.

The fountain squirted and poured down in the midst of lawns trimmed with circular flower beds. Jean Goujon's nymphs,
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so white against the gray of the stone, tilted their urns and gave grace to the seedy air of rue Saint-Denis. The children walked around watching the water empty into the six basins. They were drawn to the lawn and, no doubt, thought about scampering across the center one and into the holly and rhododendron beds that ran along the square's railings.

Now little Muche, who had already managed to crumple the back of her dress, said with his sly laugh, “Let's play throwing sand at each other.”

Pauline had been completely seduced. They closed their eyes and dove into the sand, which went into her low-cut bodice and made its way down into her stockings and boots. Muche was reveling in the way the white apron was becoming yellow. But apparently she was still too clean for his taste.

“Do you want to plant some trees?” he suddenly asked. “I can make a beautiful garden.”

“Really! A garden!” said Pauline, struck with admiration.

Since the groundskeeper was nowhere in sight, he had her dig holes in one of the flower beds. She was on her knees, in the middle of the soft soil, spread-eagle, facedown, her sweet pink arms buried to the elbows. For his part, he looked for broken branches to plant as the trees in the garden in the holes Pauline made. The only problem was that he was never satisfied with the depth of the holes and he played the angry boss, scolding her as an incompetent worker.

When she stood up, she was black from head to foot, she had soil in her hair, and her face was smudged. She looked funny, with her arms looking like a coal miner's, and Muche clapped his hands, ordering, “Now we have to water them, or else they won't grow.”

This was their crowning moment. They left the square, scooping up water from the stream in their cupped hands, and ran back to water their sticks. Along the way, Pauline, who was too fat and didn't know how to run, let the water drip from her hands down her skirt, so that by the time she had done six trips, she looked as though she had been bathing in the stream. Muche thought that she was wonderful, now that she was all dirty. He had her sit next to him, under the rhododendron in the garden they had planted. He told her that it was already starting to grow. He held her hand and called her his little wife.

“You're not sorry you came, are you? It's a lot better than just standing on the sidewalk being bored. You see, I know all kinds of games to play in the streets. You'll have to come do this again—but don't say anything to your mama about it. Don't mess it up. If you do say anything, when I go by your place, I'll pull your hair.”

Pauline just kept saying yes. As a crowning touch to his chivalry, he filled the two pockets of her apron with soil. Then he squeezed her hard with that street boy's impulse to be mean. But there was no more sugar, the game was over, and she was beginning to get worried. When he pinched her, she started to cry and said that she wanted to go. This provoked Muche, bringing out his outrageous
side, and he threatened not to take her back to her parents. The poor little thing, completely terrified, sighed like the fair maiden at the mercy of her seducer somewhere in an unknown inn. No doubt he would have started beating her to shut her up if a shrill voice, that of Mademoiselle Saget, had not shouted out, “Well, God forgive me if it isn't Pauline! Leave her alone, you nasty little boy!”